PawnMaster Blog

In today’s market, it's safe to say that "One Size Does Not Fit All." Options, personal preferences, and flexibility are essentials that business owners are looking for. They want to operate their business in a manner that is best for them, not their software provider. Owners are not looking to invest in software because their provider spouts off the latest buzz words, rather they prefer stability, reliability, and dependability.

For many years, I flew out to New York City and Las Vegas to attend the Interop. I know, it sounds pretty rough but I made the most of it. If you are not familiar, Interop is an annual trade show promoting interoperability, IP networks, and emergingcloud computing technology.

Having issues with your pawn software? You always need reliable software to run your shop, however, it is especially critical during the holidays. After all, 21% of annual retail sales came from the holidays in 2015, according to the National Retail Federation. This is why it is absolutely critical for that your software company invests in the most reliable services to protect your business.

I’ve seen it more times than I care to remember—a room filled with pawnbrokers, and the question gets asked, “How many of you do regular inventory audits?” Only a few will raise their hands. Sadly, fewer yet will attest to using inventory reports generated by their software to MANAGE their inventory. It's safe to say that if someone wanted to increase their cash flow quickly, it would be done on the inventory and sales side of the business. Let’s face it; nothing is going to instantly change the amount of cash coming in from service charge payments and redemptions. Sure, there are long term strategies that can increase those but creating that buying frenzy and getting merchandise off the shelf quicker is the key to making quick cash!

Do you use Netflix? If not, surely you know someone who does since they have 47 million subscribers in the US and 83 million subscribers worldwide. Last year, Netflix streamed 42.2 BILLION hours of content though AWS. Oh and by the way – they dominate internet traffic. In fact, last year they accounted for 36% of downstream internet traffic in North America. That’s more than YouTube, Facebook, iTunes and Hulu combined.

Having the largest customer base in the industry for many, many years (over 3,000 customers), Data Age / PawnMaster is proud to introduce PawnMaster Ignite. Ignite is the only truecloud based pawn software on the market. Data Age is known for building high quality, easy to use, "bullet proof" products. We have accomplished this by employing sound software development and testing processes. We don’t rush to market to capitalize on buzz words just to line our pockets and position our company, only to eventually get bought out. We have the resources, the firepower and the customer base, which could have seen us release a real cloud product six years ago. Cost, technology, and demand (among other reasons), saw us sit back and wait until the timing was right.

When it comes to your business, the data you store and use for reporting is a key element to your success. Unfortunately, this data can also make you a target. Storing usernames and passwords, credit card information, etc., needs to be done with the greatest levels of security and know-how. Names like “Amazon” and “eBay” instill confidence because they spare no expense to provide the best talent and technology money can buy. For decades they have been an everyday part of your personal and business needs with billions of dollars invested to make sure that your data is not compromised.

Over the past two decades, cloud computing, as well as colocation services have become so ubiquitous that many people started interchanging the two concepts. This blog attempts to explain the underlying differences and similarities between these often misused terms.

Just because you can access information online doesn’t mean that information lives in the cloud. If your technology provider claims to be cloud-based but isn't, you could be facing threats such as slow server speed, high costs of the infrastructure being passed on to you, downtime, or the ultimate nightmare – complete catastrophic data loss.

Our goal is to explain the difference in technology between true cloud computing as opposed to other means of server management.